Less commonly used surfactants fatty alcohol polyoxyethylene ethers and alkylphenol polyoxyethylene ethers

Fatty alcohol polyoxyethylene ether (AEO)

Fatty alcoholPolyoxyethylene etherIt is the most important product among modern nonionic surfactants. In the past ten years, AEO production has grown very fast. The main reasons are: household heavy-duty detergents are consumed a lot; and AEO It has excellent biochemical degradability and low price; it is consumed in large quantities in the processing of AES.

The appearance of AEO varies with the raw material and process of production. It can be liquid or waxy, and the viscosity increases with the increase in ethylene oxide content. If the ethylene oxide content in the molecule is about 65% to 70%, the product can be dissolved in water at room temperature.

The starting raw materials for the production of AEO can start from C12~C18 primary or secondary alcohols.

When performing the oxyethylation of fatty alcohols in batches, the temperature is usually 160~180°C, and caustic soda or sodium methoxide is used as the catalyst.

The physical properties of AEO make it unfavorable for formulation into laundry detergent, but it is an ideal raw material for liquid detergent. Its decontamination ability for various fibers is higher than that of LAS, and it is especially suitable for washing away grease and dirt excreted by the human body from synthetic fibers. The main use of AEO abroad is to prepare synthetic detergents. The domestic brand name is Pingpingjia series products. In addition to being partially used to compound liquid detergents, they are mainly used as leveling agents and stripping agents in the printing and dyeing industry, as raw wool cleaning agents in the wool spinning industry, and in the chemical fiber industry. Used as spinning oil. According to foreign forecasts, AEO will continue to grow and may become the dominant variety in household detergents.

Alkylphenol polyoxyethylene ether

Alkylphenol polyoxyethylene etherThe physical properties and application performance are basically the same as those of AEO similar. The structure of alkylphenols all have a branched alkyl group in the para-position of the hydroxyl group of the phenol, and its carbon number is usually 8 to 9. Compared with AEO, because the alkyl group is branched, the biochemical degradation performance is poor. On the other hand, low-carbon branched alkyl groups can improve water solubility and cleaning performance. Unacylphenol polyoxyethylene aldehyde ranks second among northern ionic surfactants after AEO. The most important of these is nonylphenolpolyoxyethylene ether. The brand name is emulsifier OP series products.

Nonene can be trimerized by propylene, and then alkylated with phenol using boron trichloride as a catalyst to form nonylphenol, which can then be further reacted with epoxy Oxyethylation of ethane occurs.

Phenol has a higher acidity than fatty alcohols and generates monoadducts quickly, so the final product does not contain free phenol. Polyoxyethylene acyl polymer The degree distribution is also narrow.

Emulsifier OP has good chemical stability and strong surface activity. It is often used to formulate various acid- and alkali-containing metal surface cleaning agents and pesticide emulsions. Agents, emulsifiers in drilling mud, water-based paints, etc., and are mainly used as oil/water phase emulsifiers, cleaning agents, wetting agents, etc. in the textile industry.